Brave summer flowers

 The last week of April with its baking hot 40°C days. The sun seems to have insatiable appetite to vaporize the entire pool of moisture from the face of earth below. The moment you step out it feels as if you have been put in an oven. So those who can help it have run to take shelter in the shade. But the wheat-harvesting farmers cannot help it. They have to face the apocalypse to beat the demon of hunger both in their stomachs as well teeming millions over the planet.

The pale, yellow, still left out leaves wilt and droop under the fiery onslaught. Submissiveness and surrender, in the absence of any alternative, is the mantra of survival and resurgence when the situations change in the future. Big trees fall in a storm. A blade of grass survives because it bends to the storm knowing fully well that it can have no say in the beginning or stopping of a storm.

Seamlessly and ceaselessly blazes the sun. The heat touches its peak between two and three in the afternoon. The streets get deserted. But right under the baking sun, two brave beings hold the baton of life. A boy is flying a kite. His boyhood’s armature blunts the heat’s knife-grinder to spin mauve loops of laughter and fun. It’s windy and the kite with its long tail sways to the hot endearment of the burning, sighing wind lashing against its paper. A little white butterfly also defies the fiery diktats and goes kissing nectar from little bulbous groups of red peregrina flowers. Well, let’s make it three—the boy, the kite and the butterfly. That’s what living is—swimming against the tide.

Put your feet on the ground, the skin may peel off. The sand is on fire. Exactly for this purpose, to save the humanity’s soles from burning, a hawker of bathroom slippers is plodding his laden bicycle with bright, attractive, multicolored footwear. His hawking tagline, punch-line rather, is very interesting. ‘Chappal lyo, gents lyo, ladies lyo!’ he shouts with confidence and brave clamor. Well, beyond meanings in spirit, in letter it means: ‘Buy slippers, buy gents, buy ladies!’

There is some water in the narrow, open water drain outside the yard wall. Beyond that there is a little patch of semi-wilderness, the last refuge of the snakes in the village. The snake must have been very thirsty to crawl out on the hot sand to take a few lolloping sips of water. It left a majestic crawl-art on the sand. A liquor-lover coming gyrating in the heat’s eddies sees the curvy lines drawn on the sand. I run out to stop him from breaking the rickety iron gate for he is banging with fists in all seriousness to warn me of the snake. ‘A huge black snake got into your garden,’ he warns. ‘The line stops at your gate. It’s surely inside your house,’ he wants me to faint with fear, looking expectantly into my eyes as if baiting out utmost fear and phobias. In the evening many people talk about the snake in different colors and sizes. The color varies to cover the entire range of spectrum. The length of course is stated to vary between a dozen feet to its half. The girth between thigh and bicep. Well, I think that’s how myths develop.

There are sun-burnt flowers still holding onto their belief in blooming and smiles. The bonsai bougainvillea has a bouquet of wispy-petaled violet flowers. I bought it from a nursery keeper who had worked in Pune for some time. The way I carry myself, I look barely a senior school passout.

The stay at a big city makes you feel more enlightened about things of knowledge and facts. Even though he may not have passed even primary school but that stint at Pune makes him take himself very seriously, especially about the names of his flowers. As we bargain about the price of a bonsai bougainvillea he has to correct me multiple times. ‘Yea, it looks a nice bonsai,’ I agree. ‘Yes, very nice bone size it is!’ he corrects me. During the time it takes to strike a deal he has corrected me at least four times. He is sure that I’m not educated enough to pronounce its name correctly. ‘Bone size sold really well in Pune. Very important educated wealthy people were my regular customers for this item,’ he is very proud of his bone size plant. ‘Thanks for the wonderful bone size,’ I correct myself at last. He is relieved at teaching me the correct name of his much esteemed plant.

The brave sadabahar in the crack in the wall looks unperturbed of the heat. Used to the extremes, I suppose. The garden trees have lost their shade. Thanks to a neighboring house, I can sit in the shade till late in the morning. At least in the morning there is dead-leaf charm and autumnal joviality which a person of poetic sensitivities can barely afford to miss. Despite the fire in the air, there are butterflies, simply because we have at least sunburnt flowers.

An episode of love and war played on a yellow parijat leaf nearby. It’s a horny flea couple. They take a tumble on my newspaper and finish the action while still rolling and fly off.

The ants want a pucca house. Who doesn’t these days? They have drilled a hole in the cemented bricks in the yard. A tiny heap of sand, a mark of the excavation work undergoing below the ground, stands as the testimony to their worksite. It’s a busy world with the ants happily carrying grains to their new granary.

The Indian robin, almost a resident bird of the small garden, hops around and tastes a few ants along with the grains in their mouths. But the ants aren’t bothered. They are so many as to not miss the few odd ones that go missing on the labor line.

Maybe there was a lizard on a branch near my shoulder. The shikra dives and lands on my shoulder like a missile. Both of us get startled beyond imagination. He struggles away angrily. I am not aware of the lizard’s fate.

A fat brown male cat comes panting, mouth open and the tongue hanging out due to the heat. He checks the yard and pees on the wheel of my scooter, sniffs at many plants and deposits himself on the wet ground under a hibiscus in a corner. He looks all set for a noontime sleep.